Santa Cruz County History - Executive Order 9066 and the Residents of Santa Cruz County

Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. July 8, 1942. p. 10

HOW MANY LOYAL?[Editorial]

How loyal to the United States are the Japanese who have been living in this country, most of whom now are in "reception centers" located well back from this coast?

At a meeting of California newspaper editors at Stanford university two weeks ago, one estimate on this subject was made by George Savage, editor of weekly papers at Lone Pine and Independence. Savage was giving a rather complete account of how 10,000 of the evacuated Japanese have been housed and cared for at Manzanar, in his territory.

He volunteered the opinion that about 30 percent of the Manzanar inmates are quietly disloyal; that another 30 percent are opportunists who do not care particularly which way the war comes out; and that the remaining 40 percent are actively loyal Americans.

Now we have run across another estimate. It comes from M. S. Eisenhower, former director of the war relocation authority, and relates to the whole 100,000 or more of the interned Japanese. A Washington dispatch says:

Mr. Eisenhower estimated that 50 percent of the Issei (foreign born Japanese) are "passively loyal" to the United States and that from 80 to 85 percent of the Nisei who have never been out of the United States are loyal. He classified a third group, the Kibei - American-born citizens who returned for a considerable period to Japan, and who were educated here - as "pointed in the other direction."

He estimated that there are about 8000 Kibei, counting those who spent three years or more in Japan after being 12 years of age. Adding the parents, wives and children of this group brings their number to between 20,000 and 25,000.

Mr. Eisenhower suggests later repatriation to Japan of these Kibei. What is to be done after the war with the loyal ones, whatever their number is, remains a problem this country and they will have to face.

Copyrighted by the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. Reproduced by permission.